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Go read Rick Wilson’s twitter rant on the OPM Hack
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Somewhere, Red Mike Edson is Smiling
An official flagging ceremony to rename Marine special operations battalions in honor of their World War II predecessors is set to take place June 19, MARSOC officials confirmed. The ceremony comes 10 months after the command first announced its plan to change the names of Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command’s component units to reflect their history.
The formal renaming was held up while Headquarters Marine Corps approved a bulletin announcing the upcoming change, said Capt. Barry Morris, a MARSOC spokesman. He said MARSOC’s headquarters in Sneads Ferry, North Carolina, also had to coordinate with its major subordinate elements to determine a date for the ceremony.
The Corps does a lot of goofy sh*t sometimes, but we do cherish our traditions. Love the skull patch, too. It will remind people that the job of the Raiders, and the USMC writ large, is to kill. Destroy the enemy.
Semper Fi, Raiders!
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Abrams Desert Live Fire
Marines from the 1st Tank Battalion conduct a live fire maneuver at 29 Palms, aka The Stumps.
Honestly, I had to read the description in the video because a live fire at NTC Fort Irwin would look virtually identical.
Designing and maintaining a target array for platoon and company sized tank and mechanized infantry units takes a lot of space, time and money. Special machines, target lifters, raise and lower sheets of plywood cut out in the outline of a tank. Most ranges also have moving targets.
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Posting just for the weirdness
Long ago, there was a commenter at milblogs that, whatever the topic, issue, problem at hand, Campbell insisted the answer was a modern hybrid airship. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for them. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. But Campbell found ways to argue for every single mission on earth for them.
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The OPM Hack- it’s a disaster
Everyone in the military, and virtually every federal employee, especially those with security clearances, has to fill out a form known as the SF 86. As you can see, it’s quite detailed.
The Chinese now have a copy of pretty much every SF 86. Worse still, the SF 86 is simply the information you give the government. The government, or its contractor, then takes that information as a starting point to review you for trustworthiness. The Chinese now also have a copy of the results of those background checks.
This information is like a guide to tell the Chinese exactly who to target for exploitation and espionage. It also gives the Chinese a great deal of useful information for counter-espionage, allowing them to ferret out possible spies that we have planted, or at least who would be a likely target for us.
Human intelligence is still absolutely critical, and ours has been thoroughly compromised.
Here’s Ace’s take on it.
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Buran
Most folks recall the Soviet Union’s answer to the American Space Shuttle program was a clone, called Buran (Blizzard). It only made one unmanned flight, of about 2 hours and two orbits, before landing. The program collapsed along with the Soviet Union. The entire program, the infrastructure, and the shuttles were simply abandoned.
Ken tipped me to this. It’s in Russian, but it’s mostly a photo essay, so that’s not really a hurdle. The pictures must have been taken before 2002 because the building collapsed then, killing 8 and destroying the vehicles.
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A Dose of Puppy Love!
H/t: Fran
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Navy: Sailors laying groundwork for missile shield in Romania
The first sailors are now on station at the controversial missile defense shield in Romania, Navy Region Europe announced Monday.
The sailors arrived last month as part of an initial wave that will “lay the groundwork for a full team deployment.”
The announcement means the AEGIS Ashore missile defense facility in Deveselu is a step closer to becoming operational. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly condemned the facility, claiming the shield is aimed at upsetting the strategic balance of power in Europe.
via Navy: Sailors laying groundwork for missile shield in Romania.
It’s interesting that they’re using teams deployed for six months. One wonders from where they will be drawn, as I understand that Operations Specialists in particular is a perpetually undermanned field. Will ships on the waterfront be tasked to detach a sailor TDY?
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Slowing down the encroachment of lawfare- It’s Israel’s fault.
No really.
Various norms have evolved over the course of man’s history in regards to the conduct of warfare. Chivalry, for example. With the vastly increased lethality of 20th century weapons, many nations sought to minimize the suffering of both combatants and noncombatants, and codified these through a series of agreements that have come to be known as the Geneva Convention.
Mind you, the key precepts of the laws of land warfare were written with a view of warfare between nation states and their organized armies.
Today, however, we’ve seen that much of warfare consists of non-state organizations, outside the norms that existed when the bulk of the Geneva Conventions were drafted. Reciprocity was the main means of encouraging compliance. You don’t use poison gas on us, we won’t use it on you. But international law has struggled to keep pace with the changes. One problem is that while nation states are constrained in their actions by the law, there is actually an incentive for non-state actors to willfully flaunt the norms of warfare.
Still and all, it is generally in a nation state’s own interests to abide by the acceptable laws of warfare. Neither you nor I would truly like to see our services wantonly killing non-combatants simply for the sake of killing or satisfying our bloodlust. On the other hand, we’ve seen rules of engagement that have become ever more complex, restrictive, and burdensome that legitimate targets of war have been spared either through delays in approval or fears of collateral damage.
Arguably no nation has gone so far out of its way to minimize civilian casualties in its military operations as Israel in its recent conflicts in the Gaza Strip. Routinely, the IDF will phone the homes surrounding a target and plead for the occupants to flee to safety. They’ve developed a tactic called “roof knocking” where a small guided rocket will hit the roof of a target to emphasize that a larger warhead is shortly enroute, to again encourage innocents to flee.
And now, Israel is being criticized for these humanitarian techniques.
As a result, he expressed his fear that the IDF “is setting an unreasonable precedent for other democratic countries of the world who may also be fighting in asymmetric wars against brutal non-state actors who abuse these laws.”
Sharing his assessment was Pnina Sharvit Baruch, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and former Dabla chief.
She said legal advisers from other militaries around the world confront her with “recurring claims” that the IDF “is going too far in its self-imposed restrictions intended to protect civilians, and that this may cause trouble down the line for other democratic nations fighting organized armed groups.”
Michael Schmitt, director of the Stockton Center for the Study for International Law at the US Naval War College, also agreed that the IDF is creating a dangerous state of affairs that may harm the West in its fight against terrorism.
As noted, some people will instantly conclude that any military operation by any nation that doesn’t adhere to this technique will quickly come to be labeled as a war crime. The problem is, Israel’s ability to use these techiques, particularly the phone calls, is due to its unique relationship with Gaza and its in depth intelligence of the organization and structure of its opponents political and military arms. No other nation faces such a foe that it could in fact pursue these techniques.
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The Army denied a Medal of Honor to this Green Beret war hero. What happened? – The Washington Post
In the waning days of summer 2013, Taliban insurgents launched a spectacular attack on a coalition military base in Afghanistan. A 400-pound car bomb rocked the eastern side of the installation, and about 10 enemy attackers armed with suicide vests, rifles, hand grenades and grenade launchers poured through a shattered wall.
Among those to respond was Staff Sgt. Earl D. Plumlee, a former reconnaissance Marine and Green Beret with the Army’s 1st Special Forces Group. He and some of the other troops who fought to protect Forward Operating Base Ghazni engaged in a fierce firefight with insurgents. Enemy attackers were no more than 20 feet away during portions of the Aug. 28 fight, according to military documents describing the event.
The battle yielded numerous awards for those who fought off the attack. But it is the award that was denied to Plumlee — the Medal of Honor — that has drawn attention on Capitol Hill and from the Defense Department Inspector General’s office.
via The Army denied a Medal of Honor to this Green Beret war hero. What happened? – The Washington Post.
The awards process has been unsatisfactory for a long time. For instance, no matter how valorous you are, if you failed a height/weight test, your records can be flagged for “no favorable personnel actions” which means you get no official recognition.
And while it is important to not lower the standards for the Medal of Honor, it’s equally important to not set a standard that simply cannot be achieved. Awards exist to be awarded. The Medal of Honor is the highest award, but it is not some talisman that mere mortals cannot touch.
McHugh has hardly inspired confidence in his leadership during his long tenure as SecArmy. And the downgrade from an enthusiastic recommendation for the Medal of Honor to the Silver Star is puzzling at best. One might reasonably question whether the Distinguished Service Cross would be the appropriate award in many cases. But when an award is so strongly endorsed throughout the chain of command and the awards process, we find it more than passing odd that it was downgraded two steps, and with little explanation.
At any event, let us celebrate the heroism and valor of SFC Plumlee, and give thanks that men such as he serve our nation.
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